Building from the work that began at Fern Creek High School in 2012 with Bread Loaf’s Brent Peters and Joe Franzen’s food studies program and Paul Barnwell’s (MA ’13) digital curriculum and came to form the Navajo Kentuckians, BLTN is moving with its partners in intentional ways to influence policy and enact social change through education. The most recent BLTN work along those lines is the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) project.

Project Snapshot

The Navajo Nation, Partners in Health (PIH) and BLTN will lead REACH Community Health Outreach Youth Leadership programs to

increase food literacy among Navajo youth;

empower youth to participate in REACH communications and model healthy practices among their peers, families, and communities;

develop a cadre of Navajo youth advocates who effectively communicate the connection between food access, health, and chronic disease prevention;

involve Navajo high school students in communications across the spectrum of REACH activities to increase Navajo youth food literacy;

communicate for a primary audience of the youth leaders’ peers and families, tribal and health system leadership, all residents in Navajo Nation, and especially high-risk families.

REACH NCHO will gather stories from across the spectrum of community health teams in order to promote REACH / COPE resources and produce videos, flyers, digital tool-kits for dissemination across multiple communication channels: PIH website and social media platform, a youth-led blog and coalition Facebook pages.

Dixie Goswami
Bread Loaf Teacher Network Director

First Steps

I returned last week to Window Rock after many years to meet with Dr. Sonya Shin, of Partners in Health, and director of the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) / Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (COPE) coalition, including our own Navajo Community Health Outreach team. We learned from each other about challenges, constraints, resources and possibilities of our recently forged partnership. (Bread Loaf is one of the “national partner” organizations described in the award announcement.) Dr. Shin, speaking about Navajo community outreach, noted that young people were being involved as change agents, leaders, and sources of understanding and insight. She voiced her hope that they would serve as a model and guide for Partners in Health’s international programs, using visual exchanges, internships, and visits to international conferences to connect. Navajo Nation Vice President Rex Lee Jim, REACH NCHO director, emphasized the role of the young people:

“In this program to improve the quality of life on the Navajo Nation, they will use their talent and energy to make a difference . . . [T]he selection process will be based on their passionate commitment to positive change.” Shel Sax, Bread Loaf’s Director of Technology, added, “They will use electronic and print technologies to document and publicly voice their ideas, knowledge, and concerns regarding an important issue in their lives.”

A November meeting of the REACH/COPE initiative took place at Window Rock High School, where Evelyn Begody teaches. Evelyn, a Bread Loaf graduate and current MLitt student, is a member of the Navajo Kentuckians, and a NCHO leader. A viewing of “Navajo Kentuckians: Cultivating Food Literacy,” filmed by Ed Dooley at Middlebury College in October 2013, opened the NCHO presentation, set the tone, and provided the context for all that followed, with much enthusiasm and interest in the food literacy and digital media learning that Joe Franzen, Brent Peters, and Paul Barnwell have created at Fern Creek Traditional High School in Kentucky.

Bread Loafers Vice President Jim, Evelyn, Dwight Largie, Shel Sax, Emily Bartels, Ceci Lewis, Damian Baca, and Tom McKenna participated—Emily, Damian, and Tom by phone and webinar, the rest of us in person. Phil Sittnick, who became a member of the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network in 1994, came on Sunday from Thoreau, New Mexico, where he teaches, to join the NCHO team to work with Shel, Tom, and REACH/COPE on technology. The presence of Evelyn’s Food Lit students inspired and enlivened the events on Monday. As we learned about Navajo Nation food and nutrition facts and policy, their comments and questions advanced the conversation. Vice President Jim’s vision of NCHO making a difference here and abroad seemed likely in this company.

The Navajo Kentuckians met at the NCTE conference in Washington, DC, last month, forging and deepening connections among NCHO, ABL/Lawrence BLTN, and Vermont BLTN. See the related article in this issue.

Since 1990, when Andover Bread Loaf (ABL) invited South African teachers to attend our summer workshop, ABL has had a vibrant international presence in its program. Although ABL has meager funding to support its work, ABL international alumni continue to work with each other and U.S. alumni over the wires and over the years through virtual exchanges and visits to each other’s classrooms. In addition, ABL has organized week-long international conferences in Pakistan, Tanzania, Kenya, and Haiti where U.S. teachers and teachers from host countries work together to offer professional development for teachers and writing and arts workshops for youth. Virtual exchanges connecting teachers and students around issues and ideas, writing and digital publishing are take-aways from the conferences. These BLTN virtual exchanges serve as models and guides for what has been described as “virtual diplomacy in action.” Planning for a 2015 conference in India is underway.

This video, produced at Bread Loaf in the summer of 2014 by Dana Olsen, Matt Lennon (MA ’13), and Benjamin Savard (MA ’14, gives a sense of the character of these exchanges, and alludes to a successful international conference held on campus in Summer 2014.

Vermont BLTN Launches Credit-Earning Course for Vermont High School Students

A group of Vermont students from area high schools gathered at Middlebury College on October 10 for the kickoff of What’s the Story: Investigating the Past, Present, and Future of the Vermont Family Farm, a course designed by a team of Vermont Bread Loafers. Rooted in the spirit of John Dewey and the tradition of Vermont’s active local politics, the course engages secondary students from across the state in an investigation of the Vermont family farm that will lead to student actions that will contribute to the health of this Vermont tradition. Thanks to a generous gift of support, these students will have access to technology to conduct their research and tell their story using cutting-edge media tools.

From the moment they first met, students wrote about and discussed their current conceptions of the Vermont family farm, identifying the questions they found most interesting. This led to each student beginning the first stages of an I-Search paper (Thank you, Ken Macrorie!), which each student will complete and bring to the course meeting in early December. Between meetings, students continue their work online with the support of an on-site mentor, a Bread Loafer who provides ongoing support at each student’s school

Students also had a chance at the October 10 meeting to hear from members of the Middlebury community interested in supporting their work. Emily Bartels and Julia Alvarez generated the same kind of excitement and awe in the students that Bread Loafers from around the globe have experienced. Congratulations to VTBLTN for an auspicious start to an amazing learning experience for a lucky group of Vermont high school students!

Student participants’ blog posts from the course may be found at this site.

Background on Vermont BLTN

The Bread Loaf School of English received a gift of support for the Vermont Bread Loaf Teacher Network, bringing together a diverse group of outstanding Vermont teachers committed to social change and community revitalization through education and collaboration. Members met this summer with representatives from Shelburne Farms and the Addison County Supervisory Union to discuss partnerships and collaborations across schools and organizations. In October, they convened at Middlebury College as part of a VT BLTN-designed hybrid online course investigating the tradition of the Vermont family farm.

Editor’s note: During late summer, 2014, a team of Andover Bread Loaf youth and educators traveled to Port au Prince, Haiti, to collaborate with Haitian educators for ABL’s fourth international conference. Below are excerpts from Rich Gorham’s detailed account of the experience. Read more about the event in Andover Bread Loaf’s Fall 2014 Newsletter. Photo credits to Brendan McGrath.

Day One: August 10, 2014

It’s 7 a.m. on Sunday, August 10, and I am in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for the Fourth Bread Loaf International Conference (Karachi 2000, Dar-es-Salaam 2002, Nairobi 2009) . . . I am sharing a room with Brendan McGrath, a primary school teacher from Boston and a long-time Bread Loafer . . . Others who arrived yesterday were Mery Lizardo, a Lawrence High teacher, former student of mine and former ABLWW Writing Leader; Nate Baez, a Writing Leader, Lawrence High School grad, college student, and spoken word poet; and Elissa Salas, a Writing Leader and photographer who just graduated from Lawrence High School in June. Two have been here since Wednesday: Ummi Modeste, a teacher from Brooklyn, New York, and fellow ABL Director, and Ceci Lewis, a teacher, doctoral student and fellow ABL Director from Sierra Vista, Arizona. Both Ummi and Ceci are brilliant teachers and scholars. Ummi worked with me at the Dar and Nairobi conferences. Brendan and Ceci were also at the Nairobi conference. Today we will welcome Marquis Victor, the artist from Lawrence (co-director of Elevated Thought Foundation); Lisa Rahilly, an elementary school teacher from Springfield, Massachusetts, who did ABL this summer; and Ashley Jones, a documentary filmmaker and Bread Loaf 2013 graduate from Students at the Center in New Orleans.

We are working with our Bread Loaf teachers here in Haiti. The brilliant, energetic Chantal Kenors is the driving force behind the conference. She spent this summer studying at Bread Loaf Vermont and just got back to Haiti on Wednesday. She is the principal at the College Classique Feminin school and also teaches at the Bridge School, which will host the conference.

***

[F]or my students of Dominican heritage in Lawrence, Haiti is a complex and sometimes fearful place. Mery, Nate, and Elissa, the Writing Leaders who are on the trip, have already talked a great deal about what it means for Dominicans to visit Haiti, and I am eager to hear more from them. We had a good conversation at dinner last night about what they have already felt and experienced. At the risk of making errors as I speak for them, I will say that they are already in love with this gorgeous, culturally and geographically rich country, that they are startled at feeling like “the other” (to paraphrase Edward Said) on the island of Hispanola, and are extremely thoughtful in thinking about what we are doing here, and why. They are compassionate and loving people, whose political antennae are tuned in. Dixie and Lou have urged us to adopt Peace Literacy as a centerpiece of Bread Loaf’s international work.

We’ve been working in various countries for 25 years, starting with black South African teachers in 1989 while apartheid was still in full force and have always characterized our work as promoting literacy, liberatory pedagogy, and cultural understanding. It is time for us to acknowledge and embrace our role in promoting peace and make that our central goal.

****

Bread Loaf has no interest in coming to Haiti to tell Haitians what to do, or to make ourselves feel better. We are here to learn more than we are to teach. We do bring with us some expertise that we hope to share, but the goal of Bread Loaf is not to create a culture of dependency but a culture of independence. On one level this is the “train the trainer” model, but we hope to push that model further. Django Paris articulated a model of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy that Dixie Goswami has urged us to push further into Culturally Productive Pedagogy. We are by definition collaborative.

Our workshops this week will be conducted collaboratively by a Haitian teacher and a United States teacher working together. We will learn from each other and hope to help build a sustainable Haitian Bread Loaf Teacher Network that will grow and evolve and serve the needs of Haitian teachers and students long into the future, one that we and others around the world can learn from. It will be rooted in the country, the community, and the people, not in Andover, Massachusetts, or Middlebury, Vermont.

The teachers we have met and worked with here are heroic. I do not mean that hyperbolically. Chantal is the principal at the CCF School, teaches one day at the Bridge School and volunteers as the curriculum director at another school that is financially unable to hire one. She runs a writer’s group and contributes to the intellectual life of the nation. She sponsors several students to attend school who cannot afford the fees . . . She is brilliant, compassionate, filled with energy and driven by a desire for social justice. Jean Laur Borgella, who attended ABL in the summer of 2013, has done stunning work. He travels all around the country to the most remote, least resourced areas to teach and train teachers. He is quiet, deferential, and extraordinary. Stories such as these seem to be common here, and in other places we have worked: Lee Krishnan in Mumbai, Mohsin Tejani in Karachi, Patricia Echessa-Kariuki in Nairobi, Jim Randalls and Kalamu ya Salaam in New Orleans come to mind. When the needs are great, great people accomplish great things. I hope to learn from them and others like them.

Day Two: August 11, 2014

ABL-Haiti’s goals are to build the Haiti Bread Loaf Teacher Network, strengthen the International Bread Loaf Teacher Network, build capacity among all participants to serve our students more effectively, develop models for teaching and learning that can be duplicated, share experiences of teaching and learning from across the world, (re) ignite our passions for and commitment to the important work of education, and celebrate the rich and vibrant culture of Haiti while recognizing challenges .

Chantal led us through the schedule. We changed some sessions, brainstormed ideas, and discussed each of the workshops. Ummi plans to do a writing prompt in the plenary sessions using an “I hope . . .” prompt. We discussed the different meanings of Kreyol terms this might translate into: Mwen ta renmen = I would like, but it won’t really happen; Mwean ta vlen = I want, and I think it can happen. Language is a complicated thing in all cases, and particularly in Haiti, where the language of instruction is often French, the language of conversation in Kreyol, and the language of commerce or international affairs is English. What I learned on Sunday is that (unsurprisingly) Kreyol is itself a mutable languge, evolving over time. This came up particularly when we discussed the Kreyol word for a particular kind of Haitian bread-treat. Since the name of our parent organization is “Bread Loaf,” we like to find an appropriate bread-related term to describe our work in each site. For example, the day-care center at Bread Loaf Vermont is “Croutons” and the daily newsletter is “The Crumb.” In Alaska the newsletter was “The Sourdough,” and in Oxford it is “The Paniculum.” In New Orleans it’s “The Beignets,” and so, we (well, the Kreyol speakers among us) had an extended discussion on the proper spelling and pronunciation of “Biswuit” or “Biskwit” or “Biskuit.” The differences are generational, location specific, and cultural. We have not yet come to resolution.

The teacher conference will take place Monday through Wednesday. The sessions will include the plenary session on Monday morning, Moving Away From the Banking Model, Expressing Identity, Connecting Our Classrooms, Parent Involvement, Connecting Haiti and the World, Mural-making, Food Literacy, Digital Literacy, and Positive Discipline. We will also have panel discussions on Understanding the Haitian Educational System and on Haitian Literature, and evening events: Mapping Haitian History, Centre Culturel Baton & Drum performance, and a visit to a Vodou Temple.

Day Three: August 12, 2014

“Bon jour!” cried Chantal at 9:21 a.m. on Monday morning, greeting the room filled with 34 educators from the U.S. and Haiti, officially launching the ABL-Haiti conference. (We would grow to nearly 40 by the end of the day). It was an exciting moment, particularly for those who have been dreaming and planning this conference for the last several years. Speaking Kreyol (one of two official languages of Haiti), Chantal welcomed all the participants and then introduced me. Speaking in English, I thanked our hosts for welcoming the visitors from the U.S., briefly explained what this funny name Bread Loaf means, and discussed the history of BLTN and our work in other sites, including Lawrence, New York, and New Orleans in the U.S. and Mumbai, Nairobi, Karachi and Capetown internationally. I thanked our inspirations and supporters, including the Abbot Academy Foundation. I explained our hope that by building a network of outstanding educators from around the world, we can do great things and explained our commitment to Peace Literacy. I then outlined some basic principles that guide our work: 1.You are the expert in the your classroom, and we are not here to tell you what to do, but to share what we have learned; 2.Everything we do is free and open, and we hope you will adapt what you learn and bring it back to your classrooms; and 3.We respect and honor all cultures and languages.

After I spoke, Chantal took over again and this time spoke in French. She asked each participant to briefly introduce himself or herself and explain his or her work. Participants proudly introduced themselves as members of the new ABL-Haiti Network.

Throughout all of this, Tatiana Behrmann seamlessly translated among three languages: English, French and Kreyol. (She is very, very good at this). When it was Ummi’s turn to introduce herself, she spoke in English and in American Sign Language. Later on in the morning, Florence wrote a poem in Spanish, so by noon on the first day, the conference had used no fewer than five languages.

Day Five: August 14, 2014

“I realized why I am in teaching, and why I chose middle school.” These are the words of Fabienne Rosseau at the conclusion of the 2014 ABL-Haiti Teacher Conference on Wednesday afternoon. Ceci asked us to think about what we will bring back to our classrooms based on what we learned in the conference. We wrote for five minutes, and then everyone shared.

Here is some of what I was able to capture. Nelson said, “I want to give [my students] the opportunity to write in a liberatory way.” Max said that he will “use the writing prompts to get students to express themselves.” Ashley said she plans to help students collaborate to write a combined New Orleans-Haiti history book. One participant said, “All of the workshops had a common theme: Make everyone part of it. We have a created a world in which everyone can make a difference.” Another said, “I work with students with learning disabilities . . each child is unique . . . without love they will not learn.” Stephanie plans to bring the Elevated Thought model to Haitian orphanages. Brendan will bring a new understanding of Haitian culture and history to his third grade class in Boston, which serves many Haitian-Americans. Florence will use what she learned from the Expressing Identity workshop with young adults in her Spanish class (in Haiti), asking students to write in French and Spanish: “I will help students know who they are, where they are from, and where they want to go.” Jean-Laur will bring the Wall of Wishes to his classroom at Bridge Academy. Nate will bring what he learned in Ashley’s Digital Media workshop to the Lawrence YMCA to help students make films based on poetry. Mery hopes to “help students find the joy of being curious in learning.” Marquis plans to develop a course based on Mosi’s workshop: studying the Haitian revolution and helping students develop art and poetry.

Day Six: August 16, 2014

And so it came to be that 40 ABL teachers and students were sitting on a ridge on the side of the mountain in the Wynne Ecological Reserve, overlooking the valley just west of Port-au-Prince, participating in art and writing workshops led by Marquis Victor and Nate Baez. Several men who worked on the farm who had helped us plant the trees sat nearby, observing what we were doing. When asked if they would like to participate in the writing workshop, one said “yes” and jumped right in. Another, a man in his fifties, said, in Kreyol, “I would like to, but I do not know how to write.” Frederika Duval, one of our teachers, gently offered to serve as his translator and scribe. He accepted eagerly and wrote about how he saw nature. When he finished, he shared his words with the group: “I see trees and I see life. I see trees as life because trees provide water. I am very proud because I have been working here for twenty years.”

Tatiana Behrmann (ABL’14) records a farmer’s writing.

Day 7: August 17, 2014

“Kelkeswa san men ou jwenn fe, fe, l ak tout nanm ou” —Klezyas 9:10 “Whatever you find to do with your hands, do it with your soul” — Ecclesiastes 9:10

These are the words (in Kreyol) posted on the wall of the Henri Christophe School in Darbonne, Leogane, that we visited on Friday morning. Situated in a rural area southwest of Port-au-Prince, the school serves 170 students ages 4-12 with 8 teachers. Fees are $27 a year, supplemented by funding from local donors and the non-profit group Haiti Partners. Benaja Antoine, a man of great intellect and love, works for Haiti Partners in coordinating the social businesses that support the schools and provides professional development for teachers. The school’s building was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake, and when people tried to rebuild, there were issues with the land. A local resident so believed in the school that he donated land on his own property, and a new facility has been built. We met with the donor and the principal and toured the classrooms and computer lab, which has five computers. The passion of the people from the community who support this school is evident. The teachers come from the local community and have been working with the school for a long time. Some of them do not have the certifications required by the government; Benaja and some volunteers are working with them to help them get certified.

The tension between what we must teach (what is core and necessarily tested and sometimes what our districts demand, pink slip in hand) and what we must teach (what we undeniably know is important to the social and emotional development and preparation of young people, though it may not yet be fully appreciated by wider school communities) is an appropriate entry point to the topic of digital literacy. Teaching digital literacy in the English classroom offers a resolution to this tension. Helping students develop digital literacy is not an additional, formidable task tethered to the English teacher, but a useful, engaging means to access and address core ELA content and skills and foster 21st Century skills.

The texts we studied this semester framed their discussions of digital literacy with a study not of technological advancement but of cultural shift. In his text Confronting the Challengers of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, Jenkins documents the rise of the “participatory culture,” one “with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices” (3). His new understanding of literacy is one that “involves the ability to both read and write across all available modes of expression” (48). In Convergence Culture, Jenkins maps and foretells the impact of converging technological and human spheres, representing “a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content” (3). dana boyd describes this brave new world as a distinct “era defined by easy access to information and mediated communication” (It’s Complicated 211). Howard Rheingold notes that “sociologists are documenting a shift from group-centric societies (in which most of one’s friends are likely to know each other) to network-centric societies (in which most of one’s network contacts don’t know each other” (Rheingold 193).

A cultural shift is at work, as evidenced in the groaning going on in faculty lounges and Department meetings. They want to have their phones out every minute! This never used to be a problem. I don’t think it’s fair that they expect me to use iPads; I’ve been teaching for thirty years. I think I can teachTheOdyssey without a piece of technology that can’t decide if it’s a glorified cell phone or a crappy computer. I don’t get it—you’re going to talk to your friend in the hallway in five minutes. Why do you have to text them every second? A girl came into class the other day upset because she had lost twitter followers. It’s ridiculous. Sometimes I want to rip those earbuds out and throw them out the window.

Technology use is driving a cultural shift, and this shifting ground leaves many teachers feeling far from sure-footed. We do have the means and the obligation to find our footing in this new and unfamiliar landscape. Our students inhabit a very different world from the world we navigated at their age, and the demands of this new world must be meaningfully addressed in schools. Schools are responsible for preparing students to successfully navigate through society, and their society demands digital literacy.

Digital literacy is the means by which our students can access and gain fluency in the core skills we already teach: comprehension, synthesis, rhetoric, and argument. Aggregating website feeds and blogging may seem foreign to the English teacher, but with time, a willingness to learn, and courage, we pen and paper types will come to recognize these new digital territories as new manifestations of reading and writing. With digital territories and tools, we can help our students learn more, learn better, and learn with greater enjoyment. If Rheingold, boyd, and Jenkins are correct, digital literacy equips our students for survival, strongly engages students in class work, empowers students to think and act independently, thoughtfully, and confidently, and helps students develop ways to solve the problems that plague their lives and the lives of others, all in the context of class content and skills. Digital literacy, then, addresses the larger goal of schools to prepare all students as much as possible for successful, rich lives in the wider world.

Mohsin Tejani is the Founder and Executive Director of the School of Writing, Karachi, Pakistan, which works in collaboration with Andover Bread Loaf, BLTN, and Write to Change. After attending ABL ’97, he completed attended the Bread Loaf School of English from 1998-2001. He also organized the first International ABL Conference in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2000. For 25 years, Mohsin has worked as a teacher, teacher educator, master trainer, and school principal, and has assumed other leadership and managerial positions with different organizations. He now implements Bread Loaf-inspired writing programs across Pakistan for teachers and students through the School of Writing.

Travelogues Karachi is a 75-hour, after-school writing and photography program that introduces participating youth from socially disadvantaged backgrounds to creative expressionand provides opportunities for increased and effective use of new media. During in-class sessions and exposure trips around the mega city of Karachi, participants use creative methods of documenting their experiences and memories of a space through the use of photography and writing to produce a travelogue.

On December 2 and 4, 2014, two groups of 25 girls and 25 boys aged 15-18 from underpriviliged neighborhoods of Karachi presented their writings to an audience of 250+ at the Public Reading event. The majority of these kids had hardly ever written anything on their own, either in their own language(s) or in English, which to them is a foreign language. One hundred more kids will participate in the program until March 2015, which is implemented by the School of Writing, Karachi, Pakistan, for the Karachi Youth Initiative. The School of Writing is inspired by the Bread Loaf philosophy and runs in collaboration with ABL, BLTN, and Write to Change.

A testimonial from a youth volunteer of Travelogues Karachi:

“The School of Writing clears the way of difficulties for those students who couldn’t write. Now, they have started to write about every step that they are taking. Which help them to understand and experience their lives, where they would be able to repeat success and remove failure. The School of Writing: hats off for making your efforts and struggle with those boys and girls.”

What follows is a clip of Brent Peters’ and Vice President Jim’s opening remarks, a set of student-presenter reflections, and a slideshow of images from the event.

Student Reflections on the Visit to Washington, DC

Navajo Kentuckians at the Smithsonian Castle

by Ty Fierce Metteba

On November 21, the Navajo Kentuckians met with Claudine Brown, Smithsonian Secretary for Education and Access, at her office at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. Director Brown, who had met with the Navajo Kentuckians at Bread Loaf-Middlebury College “Cultivating Food Literacy” 2013 conference, spoke with us about our interests and about what it means to be part of collaborative group dedicated to improving the health of our communities. Director Brown responded to my letter (below) about the meeting and encouraged me by saying that she’d like to learn more about my presentation on food and ageing. We learned about many opportunities and resources the Smithsonian provides to students, internships included.

Dear Director Claudine Brown:

Hello, I am Ty Fierce Metteba. I visited you with the Navajo Kentuckians Friday, November 21, 2014. It was a pleasure and honor to meet you. I am the tall lanky Navajo male with long hair. I never would have thought my first visit to the Smithsonian would be so eventful. Meeting you was one of the highlights of my trip to Washington D.C.

Thank you for visiting and encouraging us. I enjoyed our group conversation, especially your elaboration on intention and attention. You are right about how people set goals but do not pursue them. For example, I know I am a decent pen and ink artist, but I never followed through with it. I chose to become a violist instead, and I love it. Recently I learned how to play, Ambroise Thomas’s “Gavotte from ‘Mignon’,” a song few of my peers are able to play. I practiced to the point where my hands started to hurt, and after practicing was physically exerting. It took me a week of practice to just learn it. From this experience I learned dedication is critical. I am a junior now, and in two years, I plan to minor in music so I can continue the viola.

I want to share with you my NCTE presentation on how food is critical to the aging process. I believe this also ties into the intention and attention because almost everyone wants to live a long life, but they are not willing to make the choices for the intended longevity. For example, someone who wants to live beyond 80 years old but eats nothing but junk food is unlikely to reach his goal. If a person wants to live a long life, he has to pay attention to his diet, attitude, and exercise. As in all things, everything has positive and negative outcomes

All in all, I enjoyed this topic because it was new to me, and I was able to relate what I learned to this subject through my research in Ms. Evelyn Begody’s class, reading Omnivore’s Dilemma and other fiction and nonfiction literature. I know I have to pay attention to time and character: worthy goals. Since I intend to graduate college, I must pay attention to the process, like maintaining my 4.0 GPA, emphasizing academics over romantic endeavors, and building up my academic resume.

Thank you for meeting with us. I personally enjoyed it; it’s not every day that one meets a director at the Smithsonian. I hope to stay in contact because I very much would like to apply for an internship at the Smithsonian this summer. Thanks for all the opportunities and discussions you were able to share. I appreciate this opportunity.

Best,

Ty Fierce Metteba,

Junior at Window Rock High School

“Paying forward is a social responsibility.”

Kayla Long, Window Rock High School

I remember the first time, I was told that I was given the opportunity to attend the NCTE 2014 session in Washington, D.C. At first my reaction was just a simple “Okay” when I was informed, but when that information had finally processed through my mind, I was shocked and questioned, “Why me?” From the start everything has been surreal. Even as of now, it’s hard to process that I did present in front of multiple teachers and some directors in the English field.

The experience in Washington taught me many new things. For example, how the eastern part of the United States is a different world from the western part. My time has brought me closer to my peers—Ty, Jade, and Cassidy—and how we found a way to connect here despite having different sets of friends back at our community. While on this trip, I have also come to learn to embrace new change and not to shove it away. For example, meeting the other half of the Navajo Kentuckians, I felt awkward, but I just had to take time and try to open up. Another example would be the city life in Washington, D.C.; it was a whole different experience than my life in the Navajo Nation. Eventually, I did get used to the idea of the city and just thought of it as Phoenix, Arizona, because they’re about the same almost, but the weather temperature is a whole different story.

In the end, this trip has brought a new perspective for me, and I gained public speaking experience in front of crowd. Usually I coward away from the crowd and stutter, but through this I learned how to speak up and not worry about what others may think. It was a great opportunity to be Washington, D.C., and to travel farther than what I would have expected. Also, to be at the NTCE was an honor and a new memory for me.

Jade Goodwill, Window Rock High School

At school, we are often told to stay on the reservation – it is home. I understand that once I leave the reservation, everything would be different. However, this trip has given me a feel for what the world outside of the Navajo Nation is like – the ‘world outside’ being the capital of the United States. Not only did I get to experience life in the nation’s capital, but I also had the opportunity to strengthen my public speaking skills and meet new people. Although this trip was my second time going to Washington, D.C., I had an entirely different experience. I had experiences that differed from the first time going, like the cab rides and meeting Claudine Brown from the Smithsonian or the biggest of them all, presenting at NCTE.

After presenting my piece, “Fresh Meat” in front of a room full of people I did not know, I noticed that my public speaking skills enhanced. Leading up to the presentation, the other three students and I spent our evenings in Ms. Begody’s and Ms. Tsosie’s room constantly working on our presentations. Throughout our practice runs, we would receive comments, corrections, and tips on our PowerPoints and presentations. The night before the big day, we stayed in their room until one o’clock in the morning. As a result of the consistent practice, I noticed a dramatic difference in how I presented. I did not stutter or sound like I was about to cry when I spoke, I enunciated and got to the point of what I was trying to say quickly. I believe that these traits were what made my presentation go fluently.

In my PowerPoint I stated that I ate less beef as a result from my research. In all honestly, now that I have presented my research, I have found that I am completely avoiding beef all together. After relaying my research about beef and attempting to consume at McDonald’s hamburger at Dallas Airport, I believe that I became more conscientious of consuming beef. The beef in the hamburger had a soggy cardboard texture – it made me think of the manure lagoons – with a fresh-off-the-grill taste. I remembered the fragrances added in meat to make it have that ‘grill’ flavor. Disturbing thoughts about the beef came flooding into my mind as I took a bite out of the Quarter Pounder. It has been almost two weeks without consuming one piece of beef and I have no regrets or urge to eat it again even though a majority of my friends say that I am missing out. I know that beef is not a specialty anymore.

Overall, this trip allowed me to meet new people—not only the students from Kentucky, but the other three students that went on the trip with me. We did not converse with each other before the trip because we each had different friend groups. Even though our friend groups have not changed since coming back to school, I still know that I can go to them for questions or a good laugh. As for the five other students from Kentucky, we may have not formed a strong bond while on the short trip, but hopefully we do soon with the planned upcoming events.

As much as I want to stay where my home is, I also want to explore my options outside of the reservation. This trip proved that I am capable of presenting in front of an audience that are unfamiliar to me without getting stage fright, it helped me strengthen my work ethic by the continuous amounts of practicing, and enabled me to branch out of my usual group of friends. With the impacts that this trip has given me, I hope to go on another to make an influence on others and to create another fond memory.

Quentin Stevenson, Fern Creek Traditional High SchoolNCTE: Food Literature as a Landscape for Home
Going to Washington D.C. with Mr. Peters, Mr. Franzen, and five other Food Lit. alumni was an experience that is incomparable to anything else. The trip was the farthest I’ve ever been away from home, and I was completely comfortable. It felt like I never left home, because I didn’t. It’s easy to say that food lit is a landscape for home, and it’s easy to write a speech on it, but to feel at home in food lit is a process. Going to D.C. gave me that feeling more so than any of the classes previously had. Even though the conference is over and the speeches have been given, my landscape of home is still growing.

As for the entire trip, it is something I will look back on for my entire life. For those four days I learned more than I have for the greater part of my high school career. From the roots of America to the roots of those around me, from the time I got on the plane until the time I returned to Kentucky I was learning. Four straight days of learning is something I can honestly say I’ve never reached in the classroom setting. In my opinion it had nothing to do with the teachers (although they helped a lot), nothing to do with the students around me, nothing to do with the location, but it had everything to do with the lack of the classroom setting. Getting out into the real light of the world, and seeing the real sites, is an experience not even the greatest teachers can manufacture. The classroom setting isn’t a bad place, but sometimes it’s most effective outside of the school–whether it be the garden, Washington D.C., or the Navajo Nation. (Read full reflection here. )

Why not us? Why couldn’t we work together to extend our writing overseas as much as we had extended our minds? Those were the questions that Moshin Tejani and I asked ourselves as we worked together to develop our first student work exchange.

Moshin and the teachers and directors of the program welcomed me as family during my first summer at Andover Bread Loaf. A teacher trainer and writing workshop lead teacher for ConTextos in El Salvador, I was amazed at how the Bread Loaf Teacher Network brought educators, poets, artists, and activists together to discuss the power and influence of writing in creating communities and classrooms as places where expression was always encouraged and celebrated.

Through poetry, conversations, dinners, and laughter, Moshin and I realized that our countries had much more in common than what we originally had thought. Pakistan and El Salvador share stories of violence and poverty linked to illiteracy in their communities. International studies show a strong correlation between low levels of literacy and high levels of violence and indicate that literacy is a powerful tool for both prevention and rehabilitation. Moshin and I talked about these things. We talked about the mechanics of writing, dictation, and memorization in the schools in our countries. We felt as if we were talking about the same place.

During our visit to Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont, Pat and David’s (Patricia Echessa-Kariuki and David Wandera) stories of change through writing and global interaction both moved and thrilled us. Their work inspired us to ask the question: Why not us? Moshin and I developed the parameters for an exchange that would involve students from The School of Writing in Karachi, Pakistan, and students from the writing program of ConTextos, EscriVamos in San Salvador, El Savador.

From the beginning, we wanted our role to be as important as that of the participants. We wanted to experience the wonder, excitement, and surprise that only stories can bring. Keeping the exchange small and simple was crucial. We decided to start with only three students from each country. As we packed to return to our homes, we packed the promise to make the exchange happen.

When I first presented the idea at ConTextos, the members were as enthusiastic as I was. They knew that El Salvador and Pakistan were to share newspaper headlines for the first time. I wanted my students from the writing workshop “Soy Autor: Escritura Creative para la Paz” (I am an author: Creative Writing for Peace) to be the participants. This was challenging because younger students have more difficulty moving from place to place in the city. Their parents have concerns about the students’ safety when riding buses and traveling. We decided to invite our awesome teachers who work with us as volunteers creating didactic materials and serving as teacher fellows for the reading/writing workshops ConTextos develops to be the participants. Mohsin, also, had thought of teachers as participants. They would be from the “Dream Trust Foundation School” run by Humaria, a leader in her community.

Since we have started, there have been no doubts that this initiative sparks curiosity and questioning, which, in turn, engages participants to think deeply about their surroundings. These skills form the basis to propose new ideas, to become stakeholders, and to become agents of change. Our first six teacher participants have realized that reading and writing go beyond memorization and dictation and actually serve as a bridge to connect to others around the world.

Karachi and San Salvador Exchange

Stories that Matter

Edgar Emilio De La O

“My life is boring. I don’t really want to write about it,”said Emilio after reading aloud the first letter he wrote, based on the prompt, “why did I decide to become a teacher?” Although Emilio talked about what being a teacher meant to him and the satisfaction of being part of a change in the world, he never really freely opened up. While reading, his voice was soft and his arms locked up against each other. Writing and sharing something about one’s life sounds unnatural and irrelevant after spending a lifetime in a classroom, where the only stories written are the ones that are transcribed or dictated by the teacher. In most cases, writing in Salvadoran contexts is not a tool to externalize feelings and emotions through personal narrative.

During our group revision, Laydi and Geovany also read their stories. Unlike Emilio, they shared moments of struggle, laughter, and hard work. As they were reading, Emilio could not stop snapping his fingers, an active listening routine we had introduced. After sharing, we returned to our pieces to work on story mapping with a focus on the audience to whom we were writing. Knowing his audience has changed the way Emilio writes. He realized that a person miles away was eager to hear his story. He took a chance on being vulnerable. “I started going to school when I was four years old. I used to walk for an hour every day with my siblings, five of them, in the narrow trails on our way to the school.” He wrote, “There was a time that I didn’t have Internet or a calculator to go through match exercises. Sometimes, the boys would play outside and that made me feel envious of them, because they could spend their days playing while I was doing homework indoors”.

Emilio, Laydi, and Geovany

When the first response letter arrived, Emilio was excited and nervous. He read aloud in a soft whisper to himself, laughing sometimes, frowning his eyebrows at other times. Emilio smiled back at me with satisfaction. His story was indeed treasured for the first time. “I know now that my story is not boring. I like that Junaid asks me a lot of questions. He really wants to know about me.” We are working on revising the new response letters to our friends in Karachi. Emilio´s first draft is full of human connections and shows a wide open door to his life in El Salvador. He talks about the Spanish slang we use, the unique experience of traveling in a public bus, and the funny fact that we Salvadorans eat our own national flower “Flor de Izote.” Emilio is now enthusiastic about sharing every bit of his culture, his country, and himself with his new friend Junaid.

Over the course of the 2014 summer session, Bread Loaf teachers had the opportunity to engage with the U.S. Department of Education in two “round table” events with ED’s Dennis Bega, and Tom McKenna, who was completing his year as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow for ED. Bega and McKenna met with Bread Loaf teachers (and other teachers from around the Southwest and beyond) for two events on the Santa Fe campus in late June. Just before the close of the summer session in Vermont, Bread Loaf teachers from across rural and urban America participated in an online webinar. To close the webinar, Mr. Bega asked participants to give an unrehearsed “elevator pitch” to Secretary Arne Duncan, asking him to consider one set of needs or one set of insights. See the clip below for comments from Sheri Skelton (White Mountain, Alaska), Evelyn Begay (Window Rock, Arizona), Ceci Lewis (Sierra Vista, Arizona), Shel Sax (Middlebury College), Rich Gorham (Lawrence, Massachusetts), Marybeth Britton (Pecos, New Mexico), Nate Archambault (St. Albans, Vermont), Katie Burdett (St. Albans, Vermont), Brendan McGrath (Boston, Massachusetts), Dixie Goswami (Clemson, South Carolina).

A word cloud from the combined transcripts and reports of the conversations

by Tom McKenna (MA 96) and Brendan McGrath (MA 08)
Tom is Director of Communications for BLTN and a fourth grade teacher at Harborview Elementary, Juneau, Alaska. Brendan is a third grade teacher at Thomas Kenny Elementary, Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Through the course of the last three years, we have connected our distant elementary classrooms through various digital media. Our students have shared drawings and poems via Voicethread. They have shared images and presentations. They have used FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Adobe Connect, Edmodo, and Skype. But while preparing for a presentation we gave at NCTE with author Ralph Fletcher, we studied the transcripts of our connected-classroom discussion of Fletcher’s novel, Fig Pudding. What we found to be most transformative for our elementary student writers was the oldest technology in the mix: letter writing.

In our November, 2014 NCTE presentation, “A Taste of Place: Cross-Continental Fig Pudding,” we shared the story of interaction among our eight-to-ten-year-old students as they worked together to both understand Ralph Fletcher’s novel, and to use the novel and their correspondence to help find perspective on losses they have experienced or known about in their own lives. A semi-autobiographical novel, as Ralph Fletcher would reveal to our students by the project’s culmination, Fig Pudding tells the story of a New England family that works its way through tragedy via laughter and tears, much of which are generated during shared meals.

The exchange involved a Brendan’s third grade class (Brendan’s) at the John F. Kennedy School in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston and a fourth grade class (Tom’s) at Harborview Elementary, the downtown elementary school in Alaska’s capital city of Juneau. The exchange took place within a year-long focus on “food literacy,” a theme inspired by the work of fellow BLTNers Brent Peters, Paul Barnwell, Joe Franzen, and Rex Lee Jim. Drawing from the norms of practice of years of BLTN collaborations, we built a foundation of trust among our students with a series of personal and increasingly academic exchanges, using poetry, responses to literature, and personal talk to position our students as more than just pen pals. We realized upon review of the work, that while the students truly valued the friendship that had developed via the exchange, they had also helped one another to realize the novel’s themes through shared experiences in their lives. Conversely, each of us can point to specific children who gained voice and refined their articulation of grief through their shared encounters with the events in Fig Pudding.

Friendly Letters and Online Etiquette

“I think it’s the letters,” Dixie Goswami commented one summer morning over an early coffee. We had talked about why BreadNet has promoted sustained written dialogue and intellectual relationship-building, in contrast to the passing comments, often shallow, thread-depth, and fragmented “one-off” replies we so often see on Facebook, blogs, and other social media.

As we pored over the conversations about Fig Pudding and its themes, we were struck by this little gem of insight. With both teachers asking students to use conventions of friendly letters, we found the conversations to be marked by civility and politeness, opening spaces for trust that, at times, surprised all of us. Here, for example, is a letter from Sophia to her partner, Elioner, who had written to her most recently in his native Spanish.

Dear Elioner,

I like that little story and thank you for translating. I would translate it for you but I have no single clue on how to speak Spanish except I can count to 15 and say some colors like blue and red and some other colors too. I can also say water and hello but that’s not the point. The thing I am supposed to be talking about is Fig Pudding I would like to hear more about your story, like how old were you when that happened? Was it this year or last year or some other year?

Now I am going to talk about a time something like that. Once my dad went scuba diving. He went early in the morning and later that day, I figured out that he had run out of air in his air tank. And so he died. How my family members and I dealt with it was some other family members came down from Anchorage, Reno, and Texas but the family members from Anchorge brought my cousin Ella so how I got distracted from my dad dying. Ella and I would play with each other and my Aunt Beth who is Ella’s mom arranged a party. We got ribbons and when everybody got there they said “I am sorry for your loss,” and the house was filled with people and it was really loud so Ella and I stayed in our grandparents’ room and when everybody left they took a ribbon from the basket and tied it on our lilac tree and made a prayer, and to this day we still have every single ribbon on that tree. And that’s my story that kind of relates to Josh going to the hospital. I know it’s nothing like the story, but it’s close enough.

Your friend,

Sophia (:

Although we had discussed Sophia’s potential sensitivity to the death of a character in the novel and whether or not we should broach the subject with Sophia ahead of time, her direct revelation to her “friend,” Elioner, was on her own terms, personal, and yet still within the bounds of her academic work. Elioner soon moved back to Puerto Rico, but as Sophia progressed through the yearlong collaboration, she would engage with other writers (including Mr. McGrath) in a way that was ultimately affirming and confidence-building for her. In a recent interview about the project, she made the following comment.

“Writing the piece about my dad dying and telling this story about people coming to my grandparents’ house was hard to share, but I was positive no one would be rude or make fun of me, so I wrote about it.”

We believe the culture of civility developed through sustained letter writing goes a long way in allowing our students to “be positive” that their words and experiences will be received by interested, active, and respectful readers.

Active Listening and Empathy

In addition to moderating the exchange, both teachers scaffolded instruction for something we have come to call “active listening.” We directly teach students how to affirm that they have read one another’s ideas. Here again, we attribute the relationships to their sustained letter writing with all the conventions of civility. Below is a set of examples we shared in our November presentation.

This slide represents one of many ways we prompted our young students to adopt the conventions of respectful written discourse with one another.

This slide provides a brief collage of the kinds of thinking and sentence construction we see throughout the exchange transcript.

Evidence and Close Reading: Common Core as Common Courtesy

In large part due to our learning from Bread Loaf’s fine faculty and students, we share a belief that our work should give students regular practice finding evidence for arguments and opinions and giving close readings of texts. Here’s just one example, from hundreds, of students making reference to specifics of text—from the novel and from one another.

Dear Aiden and Kellen,

I like the question. I noticed grandma dealt with the stress by knitting by herself. That shows me that she is dealing with the stress quietly. Another way she’s just with the stress is she cooks. She had the others cook with her. Grandma said “get nuts used in two sticks of butter”. Boy she could be a drill sergeant. She wanted to forget the sadness. I like that chapter I cannot wait to see what a yidda yadda was.

Your friend,

Giuseppi

Dear Giuseppi,

I like that question too.I can relate to what you said about how grandma knits when she is stressed out.When I get stressed out,I like to read a book.What do you do when your stressed out? I’d really like to know.

Your friend,

Kellen

In her reflections on the year-long experience, Marina, now a fifth grader at Harborview Elementary, shares her processing of Ralph Fletcher’s writing style, as she reads aloud a piece much influenced by her close attention to Fletcher’s style, from sentence structure to alternation of light and dark tones, in the poignant Fig Pudding chapter “A Steaming Bowl of Sadness.”

Your Words are Your Face

A trait we initially tapped, without true intention, was one that is most deeply inherent in any eight or nine year old: curiosity. The idea of an exchange with a student of the same age but in a completely different environment from their own created a tremendous amount of questions. The simple question “Are you a boy or a girl?” was sometimes challenging to decipher through name introductions for some. It became immediately evident that the students’ written words would have to replace their most primal sense of identification: their face. With this challenge, students were impelled to make more careful writing choices and pay more keen attention to conventions than we had anticipated.

A Boston student speaks to Ralph Fletcher in a Skype session that served as the culmination of a mostly text-based exchange.

With our young—and in many cases, struggling—writers strained over the extent to which the conventions of the correspondence might be something that inhibited the flow of writing and idea-construction. Often students would draft their pieces on paper and transfer to digital text. The initial questions directed to us would not be the mundane ones like “How do I start?” or “I don’t know what to write.” They knew what they wanted to write and were eager to begin. The questions were usually more “How do you spell . . . ?” or “Do I need a capital letter here?” Often, during initial drafts, both of us tended to downplay these questions and asked students to first just commit words onto paper. However, both of us noticed versions of Brendan’s observation. “When they would go to the computers, the students were not procrastinating with convention questions; they were viewing their words as a reflection of themselves and wanted these words to speak to who they were as a person and scholar. I remember students writing the term from the text, ‘Yidda-Yadda.’ After typing, many were confused why there still would be a red line under the word and shout, ‘BUT, IT’S STILL RED!’ as if petrified to move on knowing there was a mistake being made.”

One of Brendan’s students, Angeliah, noticed changes in her writing by the end of the year.

“At the beginning of the year when I was just writing with Jade I was really nervous . . . After I started writing with you two, I really started some skills like not writing “and” so much and not saying ‘I’ so much.”

By rising to the challenge of representing themselves with the written word, students were able to take a hard look at themselves as writers and progress from young, run-on-sentence-wielding, assignment-satisfying, eight-year-old writers to more competent and reflective children of letters.